Crystal Lake looking at solutions to high water levels at Three Oaks Recreation Area

Heavy rainfall over the past couple of years has led to high water levels at Three Oaks Recreation Center in Crystal Lake, prompting the city to begin looking for potential long-term solutions to a situation causing concern for some residents.

Deputy City Manager Eric Helm said the flooding has been of particular concern this year and, to a lesser extent, last year.

For about the first 10 years of operations, the city didn’t experience flooding issues, even though Three Oaks is a natural body of water that rises and falls, Helm said.

The water that exists at Three Oaks is mainly from rain, meaning there’s no natural outlet for the water, and the lakes rely on evaporation to get rid of the water.

“If we have large rainfall events, that has a big impact on the water level,” Helm said. “In addition, it’s tied to the groundwater and the certain aquifers that exist there as well. So if the water levels are high in that particular aquifer, it’ll be high.”

According to the National Weather Service, 2019 was the third-wettest year on record since 1871. In 2020, the Chicago area saw its wettest May on record, with 9.51 inches of rainfall. The service notes on its website that a “normal” amount of rainfall would be 3.68 inches.

“For these last couple of years, more so for this year, the culmination of this resulted in higher water levels,” Helm said.

At Three Oaks, the water levels from 2013 to 2020 have risen from 862 feet above sea level to 866.8 feet above sea level, marking an increase of 4.8 feet over seven years, according to data provided by the city.

When the recreation area initially was designed, it was to match historic water levels. But now, water levels are just “blowing the charts away,” Helm said.

The city originally considered a drainage pipe when first designing Three Oaks.

Helm said the city would like to lower the water level through a water level control pipe that would drain the water farther away, as the water from Crystal Lake drains into the Fox River.

“It’s just a gradient that goes down from the city all the way down to the Fox River,” Helm said. “So if we can drain the water away from Three Oaks to lower the water level, that would be the ideal circumstances.”

About 12 to 13 years ago, the city had taken part in negotiations with some of the neighboring property owners to put a pipe in place, but they ultimately didn’t agree to it, Helm said.

But now, because the flooding has gotten to be a serious issue, Crystal Lake staff is renewing its efforts to identify some type of engineering solution to control the water levels.

Although the amenities offered at Three Oaks, such as boating, swimming and hiking, still are open, they are restricted in certain areas. Access to certain trails and shoreline areas, the south lake marina and beach sand has been limited.

To keep providing these amenities, the city has created some bypass trails and switched around operations a bit, Helm said.

“It’s not an ideal situation,” Helm said. “While we still have quite a few people come down there and they enjoy it, we realize that the water levels need to be controlled to provide the long-term assurance to people, to guests, that they can have a consistent experience every time they come out there.”

Crystal Lake now is looking at various options to solve the flooding and working with the city engineer to create a plan, although talks have been very preliminary, Helm said.

“We’re trying to make everybody feel comfortable that the water that would drain away wouldn’t negatively impact someone farther south,” Helm said.

The city has received a couple of emails from residents asking what it is doing about water levels at Three Oaks, but Helm said of the comments the city has received about Three Oaks mostly have been from Facebook.

These include comments asking to find ways to drain the lake and concerns that the marina building is flooded.

Crystal Lake resident Bill Weller noticed early last summer that higher water levels were beginning to affect the trails on both sides of the lake.

“You had to splash through the water to get out to one of the fishing areas,” he said. “I thought after a couple of high rains that would soak in a little bit, then we’d go back to normal, but it never got back to normal last summer, and it’s even less normal now than last year. ... The situation has just worsened noticeably.”

People aren’t used to seeing the flooding they have in the past couple of years, which is something the city understands, Helm said, and they have been communicating with visitors to Three Oaks, as well as staff.

“We’re hopeful for a solution soon,” Helm said. “But really, what we’re experiencing at Three Oaks is endemic of a trend that everybody is seeing everywhere.”